Women Belong in the Kitchen: Kat Petonito & Rochelle Cooper on Harassment, Burnout & Change

Kat Petonito and Rochelle Cooper run three Washington DC restaurants together, and before any of that they came up through kitchens that made them pay for being there. Rochelle was told that if she could not work with the chef who was harassing her, she would be the one moved. Twenty minutes into this one, the conversation stops being polite.

Nycci Nellis takes Industry Night out to The Point in Southwest DC, where the Potomac and the Anacostia meet, and sits down with two of the most decorated women working in this city. Kat Petonito is executive chef across The Duck and The Peach, La Collina, and The Wells for Eastern Point Collective. Rochelle Cooper is executive pastry chef across all three and the 2024 RAMMY Pastry Chef of the Year.

This chef interview podcast goes two directions at once. First into harassment in professional kitchens and what it did to two careers, including an HR conversation that ended with Rochelle choosing between a step back and a step out. Then into what they built afterward, a three restaurant group with a no touching policy, no drinking on the clock, good insurance, paid time off, mental health days, and a team that has mostly stayed six years.

Along the way there is goat butter, primal cuts, 22 quarts of duck fat a day turned into bar soap, and an ice cream label born out of a walk-in full of leftovers. For anyone in the DC food scene or the hospitality industry, this is a working model, not a mission statement.

Watch it on YouTube or listen to the podcast episode here.